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A Whangārei charity wants to provide lunch to 6000 Northland children a week - or 1.2 million annually.

The Food for Life programme, which is run by Whangārei's Hare Krishna community, has been providing lunches one day a week to up to five schools in Whangārei since 2012.

Now co-ordinator Buddhi Wilcox wants to expand the programme further across Northland.

The charity is part of the Food for Life Global group. Wilcox said in India the programme provides more than two millions meals a day. One kitchen can produce up to 200,000 meals a day, with vans coming in to collect the food and deliver it to schools up to two hours away.

Wilcox's vision would see one kitchen based in Whangārei cook 6000 meals in bulk, before vans would deliver it to primarily low-decile schools within a one-hour radius. That would cover areas such as Moerewa, Kawakawa and Dargaville.

"[It's to] give these kids a healthy, hot, nutritious meal, ideally every day of the week.

"To do that scale we need government funding and people need to be employed."

To feed 6000 kids every day for a school year of 40 weeks, the charity would produce 1.2 million meals annually. Wilcox roughly estimates it would cost between $3.5 million and $4m and he plans to lobby the Government for funding for a three-year pilot programme.

Manaia View School is one of the two current schools who receive a hot, free vegetarian lunch once a week from Food For LIfe.

Every Wednesday, the year 7 and 8 students set out the tables, chairs and lunch which is delivered by a Food for Life volunteer. Then the rest of the school's 210 students file into the hall and tuck in.

Teacher Wendy Rudolph said the programme is in line with what the school does, particularly around whanaungatanga.